[BN] Chronicles: Spain Rodriguez drew Buffalo’s grit into many years of underground comics

“His works are inconsistent in high quality however have uncommon and promising facets,” wrote Griffis in 1959. He mentioned one watercolor was once “achieved with freedom and energy,” however that there was once additionally “slight tendency towards the morbid or ugly” in his paintings.

“Against this,” Griffis wrote, “are some splendidly energetic and extraordinary research of dancers and musicians. Rodriguez has an actual present and will probably be attention-grabbing to look at in long term shows.”

In 1962, he had a one-man display at Buffalo’s unique Bohemian, beatnik hangout, Espresso Encores Galleries at 341 Franklin St.

Whilst his artwork was once well-publicized, the younger Rodriguez was once simply as prone to get within the paper for being in the midst of hassle – first as a member of the “Black T’s” gang as a tender teenager, after which later as a member of the way more notorious Street Vultures Motorbike Gang.

The issues he discovered as a child in Buffalo within the ’50s and ’60s – each as an artist and as a juvenile antisocial – served him effectively. That was once the similar combine that helped manifest the anger he felt as a Bennett Top pupil listening to in regards to the 1954 Senate hearings denouncing comedian books.  

Playing comics was once one thing he did together with his dad, from the time he was once a bit of boy within the Forties. On Sundays, his father would ship him to the shop across the nook at Humboldt and Delavan, the place he’d pick out up a newspaper and a bottle of Vernors, Rodriguez advised Information Reporter Colin Dabkowski in 2012.